Somalia has not had a functioning national government since 1991; fighting and instability have plagued the country for decades. UN relief officials concede that more than a million people have been uprooted by the interminable violence. Mark Bowden, UN Humanitarian coordinator for the East African country admits. “The crisis in Somalia is a prolonged crisis, a crisis that is going on for seventeen years.” Indeed 2009 will be a “make or break year” for the impoverished land according to Bowden.

The scope of the Somali emergency is stunning. The UN estimates that over three million people or nearly half the entire country’s population are in need of food assistance. Relief efforts will cost at least $900 million for the upcoming year and will solve only the symptoms. .

But while drought, famine and violence have long stalked this tragic land; the political consequences have gone well beyond its borders. The humanitarian disaster, a vacuum of authority, has spurned a rat’s nest armed militias and sea borne pirates who are attacking international shipping. Scores of merchant vessels from a dozen countries have been hijacked and seized for ransom. The brazen capture of a Saudi Arabian petroleum supertankers, cargo ships, and even cruise ships has been a developing story for over a year. Less so has been a simmering but entrenched Al-Qaida presence in this impoverished Islamic land.

The UN Security Council unanimously passed yet another resolution to fight piracy off the Somali coast. The resolution (#1846) is aimed a strengthening international naval efforts to combat the modern day piracy and authorizes by using “all necessary means” to combat this threat in Somali waters. While many states such as Canada, Denmark, France and the USA have been pressing for wider maritime security to guard World Food Program shipments, the current resolution seeks support for more coordinated efforts.

As part of a coordinated NATO operation, the Netherlands and Greece has been providing naval frigates to safeguard food shipments to Somalia. The European Union is now set to assume this vital mission. Since humanitarian shipments have been escorted during the past year no attacks have been reported. However there have been over 80 attacks on other vessels this year including 33 hijackings according to the London-based International Maritime Bureau with over 500 crew members being taken hostage. These latter-day buccaneers have established an elaborate ransom scheme from their pirate port haven of Eyl.

Interestingly even the People’s Republic of China Ambassador Zhang Yesui stated that piracy had become more rampant and was posing increasingly grave threats to international humanitarian assistance and maritime security and with “dire consequences for the international economy” and the lives of Somalis. Beijing’s delegate added, “piracy was merely a symptom of a larger Somali crisis, and it was important not to lose sight of its root causes.” An Italian delegate Aldo Mantovani concurred stating that the fight against piracy needed to be more “coordinated and more effective” but “piracy resulted from Somali’s dire humanitarian and political crisis.”

The pirate challenge threatens merchant shipping in the narrow maritime chokepoint between the Horn of Africa and Yemen—the passage way from the Suez Canal and a vital sea lane for global commerce. Needless to say the landward threat for ongoing Somali instability is not less as the spillover of refugees, militia violence, and instability threatens neighbors such as Ethiopia and Kenya. Given incoming president Obama’s family ties to Kenya, one should not discount deliberate destabilization efforts against that country by Islamic fundamentalists.

Once again we see how a regional crisis in a forgotten and forsaken corner of the world takes on a global impact. The new American administration will be forced to focus on Somalia’s failed state and its seaborne buccaneers.